Advocates for books that matter.

Ian Shapiro

“Shapiro’s insights are trenchant, especially with regards to the Citizens United decision, and his counsel on how the ‘status-quo bias’ in national political institutions favors the privileged. After more than a decade of imperial overreach, his restrained account of foreign policy should likewise find support.”—Scott A. Lucas, The Los Angeles Review of Books

“This is a profound and unmatched study of the order and justice of non-domination. Ian Shapiro makes the case that politics—whether domestic or international—should be about saving citizens from hell, not leading them to heaven.”—Michael Doyle, Columbia University

“Ian Shapiro has the richest knowledge of contemporary politics across the world and the keenest sense of political reality of any American political theorist. Politics against Domination is his trenchant summary of what he has learnt from more than three decades of strenuous inquiry and hard thought.”—John Dunn, University of Cambridge

“Ian Shapiro has written an exceptional book that brings together political philosophy, empirical political science, political economy, history, occasional natural science, and much else.”—Jeffrey Green, University of Pennsylvania

"Had President Bush adopted Shapiro's approach on Sept. 12, 2001, it is quite likely that he would have had more success in marginalizing adversaries."--Samantha Power, New York Times Book Review

"The Bush administration's post-9/11 national security strategy has come in for tremendous criticism, but opponents have had difficulty articulating a coherent alternative. Here is one. Shapiro . . . offers a brilliant sketch of a new strategic vision that draws on Cold War-era containment ideas."--G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs

"It's to be hoped that Shapiro is not done--his ideas here deserve extended discussion. And as the post-Bush world starts to take form, there will be a continued need for creative thinking and the rediscovery of intellectual resources we have unwisely abandoned."--Aziz Huq, American Prospect

"Shapiro makes a convincing case that so-called rogue states like North Korea and Iran can be deterred and contained even if they develop nuclear weapons."--Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Chronicle of Higher Education

"This is one of the most interesting books about politics, and power, and the way the world is going, that you are ever likely to read. What makes it so fascinating is that it is a mystery story. The mystery is this: how did the repeal of a tax that applies only to the richest 2 percent of American families become a cause so popular and so powerful that it steamrollered all the opposition placed in its way. . . . This is not simply a story about the United States. . . . [T]he moral of the tale is far wider than that. . . . Instead this is a tale about the power of narrative in politics, and the increasing ease with which individual stories can be made the be-all and end-all of political debate."--David Runciman, London Review of Books

"[Michael] Graetz . . . And [Ian] Shapiro . . . Set out to unravel what on the surface appears a mystery . . . Fueled a grassroots campaign that ended up throwing Democrats on the defensive. . . . Graetz and Shapiro make a convincing case that propaganda was not the chief reason the campaign to repeal the estate tax gathered steam. A far more important factor was that throughout the 1990s, the only people in Washington making impassioned moral arguments about it were antitax conservatives."--Eyal Press, The Nation